Are you one of those people who share quotes like ‘Work hard so that one day your signature will be an autograph’? Do you religiously believe in the hustle life? Are you the type of person who suggests working on weekends only to find all your co-workers glaring at you a minute later? Then this article is not for you, because you are too intelligent and well-informed anyways.
This article is for people who struggle at work and are unable to cope with the environment. Here are 4 tips for you to make the struggle stop.
1. Do extracurricular activities (ECA) during office hours
ECA during office hours is a splendid idea. Baking, writing, watching two episodes of a new tv series- all these can be refreshing for you. There is a thousand-year-old saying which goes ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy on social media’. Don’t be Jack. Do you want to be dull? Especially on social media? No, you don’t. So, toss a pizza while speaking to your manager on the phone or do some lifting while proof reading a report.
2. Don’t be a SME
Full form of SME is Subject Matter Expert. At school, one is taught it’s Small and Medium Enterprises. Why does anyone go to school anymore if you can’t rely on the education system to teach you one correct acronym. Anyway, SMEs have unparalleled knowledge about a subject matter. These people are most sought after in an organization. These are the people at the news of who’s taking a leave, other mediocre employees freak out. The consequence being that SMEs can almost never a enjoy a vacation fully. They’ll receive calls, emails and texts related to work because they are brilliant at their work but never thought of passing down the knowledge anyone. They kept all the knowledge for themselves because they want to be indispensable to the organization. May be this is what learned men would refer to as a case of insecurity. Congrats on your indispensability. Hope you had a good vacation.
“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.” — Benjamin Franklin
3. Stop making friends and ….. enemies
“Your colleagues aren’t your enemies, they are not your friends either. They are just your colleagues.” — A wise man
Normalize being just colleagues. Respect your colleagues. Cheer them on (minus the two-three colleagues you really can’t stand). Ask for their help and help them when necessary. Behave well with them. Being friendly and being friends are not the same thing. Just because you are nice to someone doesn’t mean the person has the right to assume you are best friends and call you when he/she is having a mental breakdown. Truth be told, calling the wrong person when you are feeling down will result in you feeling worse.
4. Don’t learn
Your family paid for your education for more than 20 years and you were hell bent on skipping as much of the classes you could. Why will you learn now because your workplace tells you to? You are not even paying for it. Your organization will send you to trainings and assign you courses. But just because you are being given exclusive training material that will help you do your job well doesn’t mean you have to go ahead and study those. Who wants to be good at their job, right? Life, itself already provides enough schooling for most people.
This article speaks about coping at work, not excelling at it. The author takes no responsibility if you end up getting no promotion or worse become unemployed, trying to apply the above-mentioned techniques to cope at work.